A Book By Any Other Name

CliffsNotes have saved us all at some point, but the yellow and black pamphlets can get a little wordy. For book summaries sharpened to the finest—and funniest—possible points, check out “Better Book Titles,” a collection of Photoshopped covers with the titles books ought to have been given. “This blog is for people who do not have thousands of hours to read book reviews or blurbs or first sentences,” comedian Dan Wilbur writes. He renames the classics—“Now you can read the greatest literary works of all time in mere seconds.” There’s a grim kind of satisfaction in seeing a masterpiece boiled down: “Mrs. Dalloway” becomes “A Quaint, Midafternoon Panic Attack” and “Ulysses” is “One Long Sentence About Handjobs.” Renaming contemporary best-sellers, he goes after their readers as often as their authors (like the entry for the first book in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy). Wilbur takes submissions, and posts the best one each week (the most recent winner, a summary of “The Sun Also Rises,” was “Jews Ruin Parties”). Peruse the galleries, submit your own, and finally feel good judging a book by its cover. A sampling below: